Soli Deo Gloria

The "DaVinci Code" swirls around the Gnostics and their quest for a secret knowledge. I've put together some information taken from a few great articles that give a brief summary of who the Gnostics were, what they believe and where their "gospels" come from. Lately the National Geographic channel has been promoting their show "The Gospel of Judas" which is a gnostic gospel. This article will help shed some light on the background of this text…

Let's start first with Gnosticism and what it is…

"Christian" Gnosticism is the belief that one must have a "gnosis" (from Greek "Gnosko," to know) or inner knowledge which is mystical knowledge obtained only after one has been properly initiated. Only a few can possess this mystical knowledge, limiting the number of those "in the know". It is a heresy that Paul battled against in some of his letters to the churches and was soundly condemned as a heresy in the first century church (40-100 A.D.). It is resurrected today as the forerunner to the New Age Religion where virtually anything goes and "religion" takes on many forms, especially the mystic Eastern religions that are so prevalent today.

Gnosticism today seems to provide a lot of the form and color for the New Age portrait of Jesus where Jesus is seen as the illumined Illuminator: one who serves as a cosmic catalyst for others' awakening. As such it is as false and heretical as the Gnosticism of the first century and needs to be roundly condemned for the heresy that it is.

The Gnostics were a group of thinkers highly influenced by Plato. Most of them denied the idea of God becoming flesh, they believed that man must find his own way to salvation and his problem is not sin but rather the need for self-knowledge. (hence gnosis)

Some gnostics believed in a dual-gender deity and almost universally denied the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some even taught that Jesus did not die on the cross, but that a substitute died for Him.

Irenaeus wrote in the second century a book entitled Against Heresies, in which he expounded the teachings of the Gnostics and regarded them as heretics.

What are the Gnostic Gospels?

The Gnostic gospels are writings by early "Christian" Gnostics. After the first century of Christianity, two primary divisions developed - the orthodox and the Gnostics. The orthodox Christians held to books we now have in the Bible and to what is today considered orthodox theology. The Gnostic Christians, if they can truly be described as Christians, held a distinctly different view of the Bible, of Jesus Christ, of salvation - and virtually every other major Christian doctrine. However, they did not have any writings by the apostles to give legitimacy to their beliefs.

That is why and how the Gnostic gospels were created. The Gnostics fraudulently attached the names of famous Christians to their writings, such as the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Philip, the gospel of Mary, etc. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in northern Egypt in 1945 represented a major discovery of Gnostic gospels. These Gnostic gospels are often pointed to as supposed "lost books of the Bible."

The gnostic gospels contain nonhistorical as well as completely foolish sayings that are attributed to Christ. Take for example this quote from the Gospel of Thomas, one of the most famous of the Gnostic Gospels:

Jesus [Yeshua] said, "Blessings on the lion if a human eats it, making the lion human. Foul is the human if a lion eats it, making the lion human."

Sounds just like something Jesus would say right?

So what about all the important names like Thomas, Mary and Judas? Since they have Biblical names can't we just accept them as valid? That would be a great big no considering the fact that the gnostics, using their speculative ideas, sought to tie their teachings to Jesus and the apostles to give their speculations legitimacy.

So, what are we to make of the Gnostic gospels? Should some or all of them be in the Bible? No, they should not. First, as we pointed out above, the Gnostic gospels are forgeries. The Gnostic gospels were fraudulently written in their names in order to give them a legitimacy in the early church. Thankfully, the early church fathers were nearly unanimous in recognize the Gnostic gospels as promoting false doctrines about virtually every key Christian doctrine. There are countless contradictions between the Gnostic gospels and the true Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Gnostic gospels can be a good source to study early Christian heresies, but they should be rejected outright as not belonging in the Bible and not representing the genuine Christian faith.

Dates of the Gnostic bible

Even scholars that try their best to give gnostic writings any shred of credibility say that the very earliest date of any of the texts is around AD 150 - at least 100, or more likely, one 150 years after Jesus' crucifixion. Contrast this with the canonical Gospels (the Protestant New Testament) which was written by credible eye witnesses and completed before AD 70. (The Gospel of John may have been written as late as AD 95.)

Parts of this article were taken by permission from gotquestions.org.

Apologetics